What Checking Your Phone Every 5 Minutes Means

The last thing you look at when you sleep and the first thing you peek into in the morning,we are obsessed with our phones in the same way the Indian media is now obsessed with bathtubs.

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t is no longer as relevant where the sun rises or where you place the dining table, Vastu and Feng Shui now command that there be a plug point near the bed so that your phone can be accessed at any point of time, even when you’re asleep. Life may have run out of charge from the stress at work but the phone battery should always be full. God forbid you miss a notification at 3.17 am about Donald Trump’s latest racist tweet.

The phone must either be under the pillow, near the pillow, or at a desk nearby, but always within touching distance, like the relationship between the media and Taimur Ali Khan. If it’s in another room, you will have to get up. And walk. What if PM Modi calls at midnight and you miss the call?

We now live in a world where people spend more time on the bed with a phone than they do with their better halves. The day’s not far away when an intimate relationship with the phone will be de rigueur; I guess that’s what all the inches talk among phone manufacturers is all about. The last thing you look at when you sleep and the first thing you peek into in the morning,we are obsessed with our phones in the same way the Indian media is now obsessed with bathtubs.

We may have no clue what to do in a fire or if there’s an earthquake, but we are now aware and programmed to look out for notifications even during our sleep. You don’t want to miss someone’s live Instagram video about their newborn for the 17th time that day, do you? Our instinct to wake up and head to the bathroom has changed to waking up and first checking the phone. Who knows, there’s probably an app out there to help you brush.

In fact, checking your phone has become the new checking the fridge. It’s a pointless exercise even though you more or less know what to expect.

We check the phone even if we accidentally wake up at 4 am. If the battery is low, you stumble for the charger in the dark. Even in the wee hours, your mind is sharp enough to make those difficult decisions. After all, you will have a sour day if you leave the house with 61 per cent battery.

In fact, checking your phone has become the new checking the fridge. It’s a pointless exercise even though you more or less know what to expect. But you do it in the vague hope that something will be different.

Maybe you’ll find a chocolate in the fridge. Maybe you missed a Tinder alert. Sometimes, you just checked your phone because you haven’t checked it in a while. You haven’t received a notification or a ping, but it’s been 23 full minutes. What if Kim Jong has actually fired a nuclear bomb and we all missed it because we decided to switch off? How would that make you feel?